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Black in fashion: the industry cycle resulting in the 'sheer whiteness' of magazines

Posted: 22/05/09 By: Nell Frizzell

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Naomi Campbell has been on the cover of British Vogue nine times; Kate Moss 26. Both models are scandal magnets, both began their careers at the same age (15), both are British. But, as you will have no doubt have noticed, Naomi Campbell is black, while Kate Moss is white.

It is this disparity, and the complex web of issues that it throws up, that took central stage at the Women's Library’s 'Black in Fashion: Have we Turned the Page?' earlier this month (May 13).

While working on a regional magazine, I once complained that the conveyor belt of scantily clad white women on our covers was not only boring but also non-representative. I was told by our editor that, were we to put a black man on the cover, the magazine would tank. According to their market research, young white women sold magazines; black cover stars were commercial suicide.

But just why is black and ethnic minority presence seen as such a commercial turn off? Why has there been a decline in the number of black models found on the catwalk and on the fashion pages? Why have so many black magazines like Colured, Ebony and Noir failed? Why is it so difficult for people writing about issues of black interest to get commissioned by mainstream titles? Well, the reasons put forward are depressingly numerous.

Carole White, of Premier Model Management, argued that the black aesthetic has simply gone out of fashion. With the opening up of the Eastern block in the 1990s, the tall, willowy, 'bland' blue-eyed look of models such as Natalia Vodianova became the aesthetic of choice for couture designers. And, as we all know, what happens on the catwalk very quickly moves to the highstreet and our magazine racks.

It is like a snake eating its own tail. As it becomes harder to get designers to design for black models, it becomes harder to get clients, publishers and advertisers to use black models; it becomes harder to get black models in magazines and eventually it gets harder to sustain a black model on your books.

One member of the audience at the event pointed to the sheer whiteness of the creative industry. With fewer black and ethnic minority people at art school, both students and tutors will overlook the need to include racial diversity in one's work. Photographers don’t practise photographing black people.

Graphic designers, without these photographs, may well not include black and Asian figures in their work. Make up artists and hair stylists may not train with black models. And so, by the time these graduates go to work for creative agencies, their white blindness will have become unremarkable, despite being unpalatable.

America, it is argued, has an economic black middle class; a community with enough financial power to keep black magazines afloat. As Jennifer G Robinson, editor of online magazine Precious, put it, 'we have an intellectual middle class, not an economic one.'

Any black person wishing to set up a magazine is confronted by several problems. First of all, a magazine is unlikely to make a profit for at least the first year, making them exceptionally expensive to establish. Secondly, it is terribly difficult to persuade advertisers that the black market is worth investing in. Thirdly, without money you cannot have quality, and so, inevitably, magazines made on a black budget will look less professional, less glossy and less impressive than the white equivalents like Vogue, Marie Claire, Esquire and Cosmopolitan.

With the decline in print journalism we can only speculate as to what will happen to the industry next. Will online publications lead the way to a more democratic creative industry? Will the volume of consumer-generated content on the internet, and the smaller outlay for setting up an online title, mean that finally the balance will be righted? Will the recession make publishers, advertisers and editors even more wary of having black people in their magazines?

Perhaps the agenda for fashion is not to turn the page, but to re-write the whole book.

Nell Frizzell blogs at http://thumbsforhire.co.uk/. She is a freelance writer and an assistant at the The Women's Library (London Metropolitan University, Old Castle St, London E1 7NT, Tel: 020 7320 2222).

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